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Posted by dodo on October 11, 19104 at 11:20:03:
In Reply to: Re: Guns posted by ed on August 26, 19100 at 08:34:37:
: : I have a strange sort of strange question. The rifle had been invented by the time of the revolutionary war, so why weren't they more commonly used?
: : Thanks,
: : Ethan Sudman
: Ethan;
: Not a strange question at all.
: Rifles were much more labor-intensive, and hence more expensive to produce, than muskets. If you're
: a king, or a congress, you don't want to deplete the public treasury on just one item when you have to fight a war.
: They were more unwieldy in size, which made loading slower. Obviously, a unit that can fire three
: vollies in a minute has an advantage over a unit that can only do one.
: Since each rifle was made separately, caliber varied from one gun to another. If you're a soldier with 75 caliber bullets and a 50 caliber gun, you're likely to be a dead soldier.
: Military life is rough on a gun, and muskets took more of a beating without failing.
: Perhaps most importantly, rifles were useless when it came to the "ultimate weapon" of 18th century
: warfare - the bayonet charge, simply because they weren't designed to take bayonets. Imagine several
: hundred soldiers running straight at you shoulder to shoulder with 18 inch bayonets levelled at your
: gut, and you are standing there with a slow-loading rifle. In such cases, it wasn't considered cowardly
: to turn around and run.
: Best regards,
: ed